Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
As Apple ’s first entry into consumer - based desktop Web publishing , iWeb 1.0 is designed to let habitation or small - commercial enterprise iLife users with no HTML or pattern skills build uncomplicated , beautiful entanglement sites . Thanks to its desegregation with the rest of the iLife ’ 06 suite , iWeb also makes it easy to incorporate audio , video , and still photographs into those sites . But while iWeb is ideal for novitiate publishers , people with more experience and higher expectations will probably find it limiting .
Instant Web pages
If there ’s an easy mode than iWeb to design and publish a Web site with a desktop app , I ’ve yet to run into it . ( Here ’s aWeb page I built with iWebas part of my examination for both this reexamination and my first looking at the covering . ) Apple has done a greatest job of incorporate the multimedia , blogging , and podcasting chemical element of today ’s consumer Web publication surround into iWeb . It ’s not only worthful for a typical online photo album , but also functional for a extensive variety of personal and business material you may desire to write on the World Wide Web .
You get at iWeb via a window with three elemental parts . The Canvas , place in the middle , is the workspace where you choose a guide ; fill that template with images , school text , and background graphics ; and produce fresh headlines and textbook boxes . A resizable Site Organizer , which lists all of your pages in decree , is turn up to the left of the Canvas , and a toolbar at the bottom of the windowpane moderate schoolbook and trope mastery .
you may alter elements on your page , without destroying the like an expert designed Apple templet , via iWeb ’s Inspector windowpane . Using the window ’s seven panes , you’re able to transfer page dimensions and color ; add ground ; take textbook property such as typeface , size , and course spacing ; set up gross profit , give-and-take wraps , and lists ; add drib shadows and reflection to your boxes and images ; and designate links . you’re able to also use the Inspector window to parole - protect your site and to cut across how much outer space is used on your iDisk . I had no problem with any of these controls : they were fleet and dynamical and perform their job without a bug , though text boxes were occasionally a mo hard to grab .
By the time you ’ve finished customizing your page , it may look nothing like the underlying template . But design - challenged family line can be passably certain that , if they do n’t mess up too much with the core constituent of the Thomas Nelson Page — such as the placement of main figure of speech and the sizing of character — their sites can look both original and well - designed .
iLife integration
iWeb ’s single windowpane let you see your varlet , adjust your site ’s organization , and get behind and omit to add media .
Once you ’ve selected your template , iWeb makes it promiscuous to inhabit your pages with all the digital medium superintend by the iLife ’ 06 suite . You use the Media web browser to pluck that content into your pages . you could simply click and drag images from the Photos paneling , motion picture from the Movies pane , and audio of any form , admit podcasts , from the Audio panelling . you could also drag and drop constituent from the Finder if you want to .
The resulting exposure - album pages are graceful , and the chute show built into every pic page with two or more photos is recherche . take in out for the Adjust Image pallette , though — using it can dramatically increase file size . One image inflate from 68 K to 80 K when I started adjusting its brightness level , demarcation , impregnation , and so forth .
Also watch over out for the mysterious schoolbook - to - image rebirth elf . Even if you ’re using a Web - friendly face such as Times , Arial , or Verdana , iWeb will often convert your school text into a PNG image without warning . Such a transition is prejudicious because it adds unnecessarily to the page ’s file size , and it prevents the affected school text from being searched and catalogue by vane spider .
One-click publishing
Once you ’ve designed your situation , upload it to .Mac is easy : you just select the Publish clit . If you have a .Mac account , iWeb will upload only pages you have change . This does n’t take long . For exercise , one mental testing site I construct took 13 minutes to upload initially . However , it took only one minute to upload a spelling change to one page .
But here ’s the weird thing : if you create two — or ten — Web sites in iWeb , and you ’re using one - click publication to upload to your .Mac server , you have no pick but to upload all the land site . If you want to separate your various site — to broadcast them to different server , for example — you could use the program ’s Publish To A Folder bidding , which separates the iWeb file into its portion folders . But that operation may scare off actual Web newbies .
With your .Mac account , you could work on the same iWeb sites from dissimilar locations , such as your home and your authority , but the procedure for doing this was n’t explained in the documentation available at the metre of this review ; Apple has subsequently publisheda tech noteexplaining the procedure .
Design deficiencies
While iWeb can create very attractive internet site , some elements of the program ’s templates can be uncompromising . You ca n’t move the sailing menu , for good example . While you may hide sealed Page from the template ’s navigation menu , something that the program creates mechanically and changes dynamically , there ’s no means to make submenus . For example , if you have a photo section of your site that you want to doom as the lord page in the navigation , you have to manually create connectedness to all of your individual album — this is easy , but a hierarchical menu would be more graceful . And there ’s no way to start an iWeb task without using one of its built - in templates .
iWeb has no image - optimization feature , which is something I go for Apple will regard for the next interlingual rendition . Many weekend photographers make great digital image , which will download slowly onto looker ’ figurer . Large images also take up a lot of space on the .Mac server . Apple says that images are optimized to 800 - by-600 pixels , and iWeb does render non - Web image formats such as Raw and TIFF to the Web - friendly PNG data formatting , but that ’s not the same matter as abbreviate the single file size of it to attain a sane download time .
Moreover , Apple most often practice PNG as the image formatting for iWeb — alternatively of the more democratic JPEG — despite the fact that , in most cases , PNG files are larger than JPEGs . While your JPEG pic - album image are not converted into PNGs , the formatted thumbnails for your album book binding are . Apple says that it favor the PNG format because it support transparence , as well as other effect have on iWeb Page .
Clunky FTP
While iWeb heavily favors .Mac as a publication fomite , you could use the app to put up a Web website to a non-.Mac server . To use the Publish To A Folder command , navigate toyour user brochure / situation , find the files you want to replicate , and upload them via FTP . But if you ’re customary to old - fashioned vane publication — make varlet in a tool like BBEdit or Dreamweaver and then upload the results via FTP — that process may seem unnecessarily complicated .
If you do use an FTP platform to mail selected iWeb varlet , upgrade your Web site is n’t simple . Because you ’re bypassing iWeb ’s upload - everything process , you have to download the HTML file you want to change , view its root in your web browser , copy and paste that root codification into BBEdit or TextWrangler , make the changes you desire , and then upload the saved written document to the server .
Finally , if you do n’t practice .Mac to publish your site , iWeb ’s signature slideway - show , hit - heel counter , and password - protection feature of speech will not work ( though you will get a plainer , perfectly serviceable , swoop - show ) .
Macworld’s buying advice
If you have a .Mac account , no Web skills , and a desire to build a well - design Web website , iWeb 1.0 is definitely for you . If you use any iLife app and have a .Mac account , iWeb will be well worth your meter . But if you ’re habitual to traditional Web publication , the debut version of iWeb will let down , both in terms of convenience and in important areas such as image optimization , menu seafaring , and site portability .
[ EDITOR ’S NOTE : On February 15 , after this review was to begin with write , Apple give up an update to iWeb . The update addressed a number of issuing raised in our original review ; please read our update review of iWeb 1.0.1 . ]
